The sky over Hollow Creek sagged under the weight of approaching stormclouds. Arden stepped out of the taxi into air that smelled of wet moss and rust. She pulled her coat tighter. The cottage loomed ahead like something half-forgotten in a dream—a place that had once been safe, now worn and ghosted with time.
The door creaked open before she knocked.
"Arden."
Her mother's voice was hoarser than she remembered, her frame more fragile beneath the thick cardigan. She looked like she'd been shrinking for years, slowly folding inward around an unspoken grief.
"Mum," Arden breathed.
They stared at each other. No hug. No tears. Just the brittle space between two women who'd weathered storms but never the same ones.
"You look older," her mother said, a tilt of the mouth trying to be a smile.
"You look tired."
"Same difference."
Inside, the cottage hadn't changed. The armchair with the lopsided cushion. The fireplace that never drew properly. The wallpaper peeling just behind the bookshelf where Arden used to hide cigarettes and journals filled with Cole Merrick's name.
The kettle whistled like it remembered them too.
"Cole brought you,'' her mother said, eyes not leaving the teacups she arranged with shaking hands. "Bit poetic, that."
"I didn't plan it," Arden muttered. "We shared a train car. That's all."
"Mm."
Her mother handed her a cup. "You don't come back for five years. Then you roll in with the boy who buried your brother. Hard not to raise eyebrows."
Arden flinched. "Jamie buried himself."
The silence that followed was heavier than before.
"He was a boy," her mother said softly.
"He was seventeen and playing games with men twice his age," Arden snapped. "He made his choices. So did Cole."
"And so did you."
That stung more than Arden expected. She set the teacup down, untouched. Her hands were trembling now too.
"I came to help you. I didn't come for a reckoning."
"You'll get one anyway. That's how this town works."
Later, in her old bedroom, Arden stared at the same ceiling she used to trace with lazy fingers while Cole slept beside her, arm slung over her waist. The ceiling still had that water stain shaped like a crooked heart. Still looked like it might fall in if anyone asked too much of it.
Just like her.
She lay on the bed fully clothed, eyes open.
Jamie's laugh echoed in the back of her skull—scrappy and bold, too loud for this quiet little town. He'd been wild. He'd been hers to protect. She hadn't done enough.
A knock at her door pulled her from the memory.
"Arden?" Her mother's voice, quieter now. "You have a visitor.''
She sat up, throat tightening. "Who?"
But she already knew.
Arden stood at the top of the stairs, staring down into the dim entry hall, heart thudding with the kind of dread she hadn't felt since the night everything fell apart.
He was standing just inside the door.
Cole Merrick.
Even here, in this house that had once been sanctuary, he looked like an intruder—and yet heartbreakingly familiar. He hadn't taken off his coat. Rain still speckled his shoulders. His eyes met hers like they were picking up a thread no one else could see.
"You shouldn't be here," Arden said, voice tight.
"Your mum invited me," he said, glancing toward the kitchen. "Said you'd want to talk."
"She had no right."
"She's worried about you. So am I."
She descended slowly, her fingers grazing the wooden railing as if grounding herself.
"You lost the right to worry about me when you called my brother a liar in front of a courtroom."
"And you lost the right to pretend he was innocent when you found that gun in his room and hid it," he said—quiet, but sharp as a blade. "We both made choices, Arden."
She stared at him, her breath short.
The air between them thickened with five years of silence, of almosts, of what-ifs that tasted like smoke and rust. He took a step closer, but she didn't move.
"I didn't come to fight," he said. "I came because you're back, and nothing about that feels like coincidence."
She blinked hard. "You think fate has something to do with this?"
"No," he said. "I think unfinished business does."
She crossed her arms. "Well, whatever business we had, Cole, it's dead."
"Then why did you keep the letters?"
Her stomach flipped. "What?"
"I saw them," he said, voice low. "In the train station—your notebook. I recognized my handwriting on one of the pages tucked inside. You kept them."
For a moment, Arden felt exposed—like he'd reached into her chest and peeled back something raw.
'I kept them to remind myself who you are," she said bitterly.
"No," he murmured. "You kept them because part of you never stopped wondering if it was all a mistake."
She couldn't speak. The words wouldn't come. Behind her, the kettle began to scream again, sharp and unrelenting.
Her mother's voice floated from the kitchen: "Ask him to stay for dinner, love."
Arden closed her eyes.
She should say no.
But when she opened them again, Cole was still there, rain running from the collar of his coat like it had nowhere else to go.
And she didn't say anything at all.
Dinner was quiet.
The kind of quiet where forks against ceramic sound like gunfire. Where every breath feels too loud, and every silence carries the weight of everything unsaid.
Cole sat at the far end of the table, posture too stiff, like he didn't quite know where to put his hands or his guilt.
Her mother served stew and fresh bread, like it was any ordinary Thursday.
"So," she said lightly, "how's work, Cole?"
Arden shot her a glare over her wineglass. "Seriously?"
"I asked a question."
Cole cleared his throat. "Same as always. Property disputes. Flood zoning. Council wants to develop the west marsh but locals are fighting it."
Her mother nodded. "You always did like sorting other people's messes."
Arden bit back a sharp smile. For once, her mother wasn't pulling punches.
"I didn't come here to talk about work," Cole said, turning slightly toward Arden.
She dropped her spoon. "Then don't."
But her hands betrayed her—fidgeting with her bracelet, her nails pressing half-moons into her palm.
He noticed. Of course he noticed. Cole had always been the first to read her silences.
"You remember when we built that fort behind Hollow Creek Bridge?" he asked softly. "We used your dad's old tarp and those crates from the bakery."
Arden froze.
"That was the summer Jamie broke his arm," she murmured, before she could stop herself. "He tried to jump from the roof to impress your sister."
Cole smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "You spent every day reading to him inside that fort. And every night, I came by after dark, and we'd—"
"Don't." Her voice cracked. "Don't dig up ghosts, Cole."
"I'm not," he said gently. "I'm trying to remind you that before the trial, before everything—we were real."
Arden stood abruptly, chair scraping the old tile. "And look how that ended."
She left the room. Upstairs, the hallway pressed in too tight, and her old bedroom looked smaller than it had an hour ago. She collapsed onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.
She had come back to bury the past.
But the past had been waiting.
And he still knew how to touch the places she thought she'd bricked over.
Downstairs, Cole's voice rose in quiet conversation with her mother. No anger. No pleading. Just a man trying not to lose again.
And for the first time in five years, Arden wasn't sure if she wanted to let him go.